SOCIAL JUSTICE INFLUENTIAL TEXTS
The following texts include sites, films, and books that were essential to my learning during my time in the social justice program and range from issues around race, gender, sexuality, history, activism, and reproducitve justice. Please read below to view each texts as well as a description of its content.
AT THE DARK END OF THE STREET: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance- a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, Danielle McGuire, 2011
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Danielle McGuire, author and historian, wrote At The Dark End Of The Street, about the civil rights movement from a new lens. She tells the hidden stories of the sexual violence commited by white men against Black women that persisted after slavery into the early 1970’s and highlights the consistent false accusations of Black men raping white women. Through this collection of cases and stories she not only calls attention to the injustices within the court system, but how sex was used as a way to instill fear in African-Americans and uphold white supremacy in the south. Additionally, she reveals the true story of the infamous Rosa Parks and her courageous activist work before her “spontaneous” act to not give up her seat on the bus, which led to the 1955 bus boycott, and later the larger civil rights movement. This book opened up my eyes to the truth of the civil rights movement and cleared up misconceptions I had based on the dominant narrative I was previously taught. I use knowledge from this book towards my concentration area of reproductive justice to understand the historical background of one of the populations I’m interested in working with.
DUDE YOU'RE A FAG: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, C.J. Pascoe, 2012
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C.J. Pascoe is an author and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon who teaches courses around sexuality, gender, and masculinity and wrote this ethnographic novel about masculinity and sexuality in highschool. The book showcases concepts of toxic masculinity, homophobia, gender norming, and sexual harassment that exist in highschool. Pascoe explores the connection between masculinity and how it is used to uphold and sustain hetersexuality. Her research reveals how homophobia often has more to do with gender norms and maintaining masculine ideals than sexuality. Pascoe shows how femininity is seen as less than masculinity in how boys who act more feminine are harassed more than girls who act more masculine. She explores the “fag” concept and how this degrading term is used mostly by hetersexual boys towards straight and gay boys as a way to insult, uphold heternormativity, and invalidate homosexulity. This book made me think deeper about gender, sexuality, and masculinity and how they intersect with one another. It made me realize that homophobia isn’t just about sexuality, but about gender norms and toxic masculinity as well. I will incorporate these ideas into my reproductive justice work by taking into account issues around gender norms and heteronormativity and making sure to be inclusive to all people.
BLACK WOMEN BIRTHING JUSTICE
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Black Women Birthing Justice is a blog maintained by a group of African-American, African, Caribbean, and multiracial women who are focused on birth justice for Black women and transfolk. They strive to have pregnant people be empowered during pregnancy, labor, birth, and postpartum to make educated and informed decisions about themselves and their children. Black Women Birthing Justice main goals are to make Black women feel empowered in birth, increase Black women’s access to affordable and sufficient prenatal, labor, delivery, and postpartum care, increase Black women’s knowledge about alternate birth practices and settings, to educate Black women about doulas and midwives, and inform Black women about the effects of medical intervention so they can make informed decisions. They try to achieve these goals through events, blog post, published books, community education, listing local and national resources on their blog, and overall increasing access to services through their individual work. This blog is the epitome of why I want to go into reproductive justice work and specifically why I want to be able to work with Black women. Black Women Birthing Justice continues to inspire me and remind me that this is the type of work that I am supposed to be doing.
TRAPPED, Dawn Porter, 2016
Trapped, by Dawn Porter, is a beautifully directed 2016 documentary about TRAP laws and their impact on patients, nurses, doctors, and providers in Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas. The film exemplifies how these laws have strict rules that are almost impossible to abide by and essentially force clinics to close. In addition, Porter shows the emotional turmoil that these clinics face everyday by helping patients through the challenging process of abortion and facing anti-abortionist outside of their clinics. Trapped expanded my knowledge on the difficulty of access to safe abortions, especially in the south. I wasn’t aware of how it may emotionally impact nurses, doctors, and providers as much as it does patients. It made me see how brave these people are to come to work everyday and risk their lives to do this type of work. It is one of my inspirations for wanting to go into reproductive justice work and increase access to safe and legal abortions.
KILLING THE BLACK BODY: Race, Reproduction, And The Meaning Of Liberty, Dorothy Roberts, 1997
Dorothy Roberts, author, professor, and scholar wrote the incredible novel Killing The Black Body, where she fearlessly unveils the truth about the reproductive injustices Black women have faced from slavery, to sterilization, to policies specifically targeting Black women’s reproduction. She addresses the stereotypical images of Black mothers portrayed in advertising, t.v. shows, movies, and policies. Roberts emphasises how at its inception, the reproductive justice movement was centered around middle-class white women’s access to abortion and critiques how it didn’t address the issues that had been impacting Black women for centuries. She highlights the important fact that reproductive decisions are always made within a social context. Finally, Roberts makes recommendations on how to create reproductive autonomy for Black women that aligns with the constitutions promise of liberty and equality. This book expanded my knowledge on the history of policies and laws targeted towards controlling Black women’s reproduction. Roberts novel is at the core of why I want to go into reproductive justice and specifically why working with Black women is so important to me.
RADICAL REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE: Foundations, Theory, Practice, Critique. Edited by Loretta Ross, Lynn Roberts, Erika Derkas, Whitney Peoples, and Pamela Bridgewater. 2017
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Ross et al. is a group of women of color with varying degrees and backgrounds who wrote this reproductive justice book about thinking beyond the pro-life or pro-choice binary and focusing on how people’s intersecting identities influence their choice or even their access to choice. The book strives to incorporate the voices of women of color, poor women, women with disabilities, and trans folk and discusses not only a person’s right to have children or not to have children, but the right to parent and be able to provide for one’s child. The authors incorporate the topics of capitalism, white-supremacy, and neo-liberalism and their connection to issues within reproductive justice. This anthology significantly expanded my knowledge on reproductive justice. Previous to reading this book I only thought about reproductive justice as pro-life vs. pro-choice and didn’t consider the multiple factors that go into issues around reproductive justice. This anthology holds the underlying framework of my knowledge around reproductive justice and ideals I will incorporate into my future work.
